Syracuse / Siracusa

The center for Hellenic culture on the east coast, Siracusa boasts a terrific museum, a spectacular theater…

…the "Ear of Dionysius" (a quarry so named by Caravaggio, who rather fondly imagined Dionysius I used it as a device for listening in on his prisoners — it does have bizarrely good acoustics)…

…and my personal favorite, a fully preserved Doric temple, preserved by its conversion into a church by the Byzantines, a mosque by the Arabs, and then a church again by the Normans. The facade looks like the facade of many beautiful Sicilian churches, but inside, the naves are lined with the walls of the ancient cella and the outer walls consist of a sequence of columns, giving way to small side-chapels on the south side, but filled in on the north…